What they are saying in terms of casters scaling is - as you seen in competitive games, they can be left with only a strider and chalice after 30 minutes, because there is just no gold for them, they die first in team battles - and all the assisting doesn't help them.

Now, we don't want them to suddenly get a sheepstick - but surely, a tablet at least, some bracers etc - which I think is good.

Also wasnt casters being good the whole game a prob during beta. Seems alot of casters have been nerfed to the ground cause they are too good for too long. (ds hb big stand outs). Seems after the nerfs to carrys that were too good early (aka the one with stuns) and the support that was good late (see above) s2 is going to undo it.

And on messing around with given exp, has the new dota one worked at all? Seems trying to stop tri lanes and making team fights better doesnt work.

I try to explain why giving supports items late is not a good idea. Lets imagine you play a meelee hard carry. you lane against a witchslayer support, he harresses the **** out of you, sets up kills on you, whatever. you keep calm because you know: in 30 minutes ill rape your ass and there is nothing you can do about it. but now support witchslayer does not only have boots and a bracer, he has a sheepstick, and his other supporterfriend has a frostfieldplate. you pop your shrunken and start attacking and Bam you get a frostfield in the face. as soon as shrunken wears of you are hexed. not only once but twice. you are now permadisabled because everybody has items. gratz you are useless, not only early but also late. Insert trollface.jpg on witchslayer.
Supports should not be able to buy items other then wards and the occasional lowprice support item (like tablet). otherwise they are TOO useful, and they carry over their early dominace to the lategame.

I try to explain why giving supports items late is not a good idea. Lets imagine you play a meelee hard carry. you lane against a witchslayer support, he harresses the **** out of you, sets up kills on you, whatever. you keep calm because you know: in 30 minutes ill rape your ass and there is nothing you can do about it. but now support witchslayer does not only have boots and a bracer, he has a sheepstick, and his other supporterfriend has a frostfieldplate. you pop your shrunken and start attacking and Bam you get a frostfield in the face. as soon as shrunken wears of you are hexed. not only once but twice. you are now permadisabled because everybody has items. gratz you are useless, not only early but also late. Insert trollface.jpg on witchslayer.
Supports should not be able to buy items other then wards and the occasional lowprice support item (like tablet). otherwise they are TOO useful, and they carry over their early dominace to the lategame.

I suspect that you misunderstand S2's intentions. They're not looking to give support heroes massive farm and access to all of their ideal items; they're just looking to put them in a position where they're able to purchase items beyond wards and boots. A carry will still ultimately outfarm them. It's about striking a balance where support heroes get at least some reward for supporting their team.

The possibility of getting balanced heroes at a faster pace has also piqued my interest.

I try to explain why giving supports items late is not a good idea. Lets imagine you play a meelee hard carry. you lane against a witchslayer support, he harresses the **** out of you, sets up kills on you, whatever. you keep calm because you know: in 30 minutes ill rape your ass and there is nothing you can do about it. but now support witchslayer does not only have boots and a bracer, he has a sheepstick, and his other supporterfriend has a frostfieldplate. you pop your shrunken and start attacking and Bam you get a frostfield in the face. as soon as shrunken wears of you are hexed. not only once but twice. you are now permadisabled because everybody has items. gratz you are useless, not only early but also late. Insert trollface.jpg on witchslayer.
Supports should not be able to buy items other then wards and the occasional lowprice support item (like tablet). otherwise they are TOO useful, and they carry over their early dominace to the lategame.

I really don't understand what s2 is thinking wanting to make games faster.

Using the chalice as an example for "faster game pace" we see that it has caused several very popular heroes to be imbalanced. Chalice has made heroes like zues/behe/voodoo/hammer/20 other heroes completely rigged, and other heroes who don't benefit from this item completely underpowered(tree/magebane/plague/etc). And dont forget that chalice has completely destroyed silencer(AND HE IS STILL BEING NERFED). The item has completely destroyed the metagame and I DON'T want to see hereoes being balanced off it.

I think striders are fine they need to be just a little bit more expensive(500 recipe).

Another issue that bob saggot has mentioned is that because you've introduced so many gankers into the game to shorten game lengths, half of my games I HAVE to run around with a gank squad/counter gank squad, PROLONGING THE GAME.

"We also find that the tower AI is somewhat punishing to push attempts and could behave a little more consistently." I'm very happy that you guys will admit that the tower mechanics are not consistent.

As for the map section, I find this kind of unsettling.

The biggest issue I think that s2 has when balancing ANYTHING is that instead of changing 1 thing(thus having a control) they change MULTIPLE things and then gauge the "balance", try having a control it helps.

Very nice post Fielding, I like the fact you took some time to update us on your long term vision/plans now that we are bit falling behind on the new features until TMM and the Editor are ready (and ofcourse it's totally logical these things take a long time).

I like the fact that support is being looked at. Maybe there could be a system that gives discount on some items depending on your farm? For example looking at creep kills, gold earned and gold spent on support items (wards, potions, things like that) while factoring in the current game time, and then determining the amount of discount that will be given on items like boots, bracers, tablet, maybe even astrolabe and such.
Items like Sheepstick, Frostfield etc I'd consider too powerful to get a discount, but some items could be given a discount without giving the support too much of a boost.

Ofcourse those discounts should only be handed out to people struggling in the game, not a (Semi)support which has good farm.

High five S2, fresh ideas is what will make this game live for a long time.

People, especially gamers are afraid of change since it forces them to rethink their strategies, the way they play. The few unhappy with game pace changes will probably leave, whine HoN becomes LoL etc.

Don't bother though, the majority will love the changes after a while. Action paced games are the ones best remembered, not farmfests and turtle-strats.
There simply should be an equal reason-ability in different strategies.

Good luck with these plans, looking forward to what you come up with to change game pace especially.

Im just talking from personal experience here... But since all this focus on ganking started my games have become alot longer in general. All these ganking heroes do is delay the other team's carrys farm, resulting in even longer turtle games as no team will be able to push untill their carry has decent farm. Another side effect is that there's too high risk for a carry to even join midgame teamfights as its currently suicide walking into all the nukers without shrunken head+dps item. This in turn turns the midgame into a 4v4 while each team's carry solo farm. Atleast this sums up my last 50 serious games.

Such a huge change will require not only unbelievable skilled guys in the balance section, but also a huge amount of luck and timing.

I do find it weird that it took you about 8 years of DotA and 3 years of developing HoN, before you realized that you needed to make such huge changes to the recipe in order to make it successful. You must have been in love with DotA in the first place (which "suffers" from the same issues as pointed out in the OP), and yet you suddenly want to change a lot of the basics drastically? At least it didn't take Demigod and LoL 3 years of development, before they realized that changes needed to be made.

Another note is that when I think of S2, "balancing gosus" isn't really the first thing that comes to mind. In the OP both Blood Chalice and Striders are given as examples, and they are IMO some of the most flawed items in the game. I also remember the "XP change" on the beta-beta, and I can't believe such a brainfart even made it into the beta-beta!?!

Guess its do-or-die time now for HoN/S2, and tbh it isn't looking too good. This is - sadly - the first time I've been happy that DotA2 is announced, as us freaks will be able to play the game/genre that we have grown to love.

Originally Posted by Warchamp7

It has been a horrible experience watching such a fantastic product fade into what it has become; a shadow of it's former self and a mere glimmer of what it had the potential to be.

Originally Posted by Maliken

Our single main focus is to bring extremely high levels of enjoyment to as many players as possible through our games.

The Game is fast pace action orientated already
Loosing gold in team fights benefits the casters
If the carry don`t lose gold it will dis-balance the game
and games last 40 min average witch is fine
new items new heroes is great....

Faster paced should probably read more along the lines of more action oriented. The direction of these discussion points & observations should not read into "making the game easier to play" or "lowering the skill cap". It should read more like, non-action oriented farming of PvE while foresaking PvP action or pushing is a play style that should continue to be squeezed out of the game.

This seems like a pretty gigantic undertaking. DoTA took years and years to achieve game play and game mechanics that flowed well. I think the development team needs to focus on delivering the things that were promised before release, before undertaking a possibly impossible task of tweaking core game mechanics.

Maybe that's just me, I don't know. But this thread makes me worry that S2 games will try and make HoN cater to the masses of casual players. As a short term financial decision, this is great, but it might cost you the loyalty of a lot of players.